There's a reason why most Republican wingnuts don't venture outside of the safe confines of Fox "News" or other venues where they won't have to face actual, reality-based information and questions from outside of their comfortable, fact-free bubble.

My conversation on air Thursday with RW "voter fraud" fraudster, commie-hunter, and fact-challenged Fox fave David Horowitz illustrated that point with crystal clarity once again. The result wasn't pretty. At least for him.

When asked for actual facts to back up his extraordinary claims about "Democratic voter fraud" --- specifically, that caretakers at his brother-in-law's residential care facility "committed fraud" by helping the brother-in-law, and purportedly sixty others at the home, to vote --- Horowitz had nothing.

He was, however, able to call me a "communist wanna be", a "liar" and an "extreme partisan" for having displayed the temerity to ask him for such facts. He was even able to pile on top of all of that by claiming (falsely) that I'd called him all sorts of names and even that I had accused him of committing fraud!

That's why these guys don't leave the Fox Fantasy World bubble.

As I say, it wasn't pretty. But the audio of yesterday's radio "interview", and the background on what happened, all follows below. I think you may enjoy it...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 2012 set to be one of the hottest years on record; Sea levels rising faster than predicted; Plankton is in trouble; Does air pollution raise the risk of autism?; PLUS: EPA knocks BP out of federal contracting ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Yesterday, Greg Sargent at Washington Post quoted Nicole Dewey, Bartlett's publicist at Doubleday at the time, confirming Bartlett's assertion that while he had previously been a regular on Fox, upon publication of his book that was critical of Dubya, "no one would book him" at the pretend "news" channel.

But it was this remark from Frum, specifically his wicked parting shot, which cuts the deepest, and likely ensures (as if there was any question about it), that he will not be appearing on Fox "News" at any time in the foreseeable future either:

[M]aybe Bruce should consider himself fortunate. Totally ignoring untoward events is only Step 1 of the Fox method. Step 2 would have been to invite people to revile Bruce on air, without any opportunity for him to respond or defend himself.

On my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show today we covered quite a bit of ground.

From Republican admissions about the most obvious story in the world (that the Florida GOP was attempting to suppress the vote this year), to the debate over filibuster reform in the U.S. Senate, and whether it should be mended, ended, or none of the above, with David Swanson (his vote: end it!), to the latest Green News Report and a remarkable piece of audio tape from a (now former?) Bill O'Reilly fan who saw the new documentary Chasing Ice and is pissed that she's been so misled by O'Reilly and Fox "News" about climate change for so many years...

Rachel Maddow's entire intro and interview with Crist last night is very much worth watching, and so we'll post both at the bottom of this article. But one point in particular during the interview with the Republican-turned-independent needs to be highlighted here.

The contrast couldn't be more stark from his successor, the reprehensible current Governor Rick Scott, who spent much of this past election year rolling back Crist's improvement to the voting system, in an attempt to keep legal, Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast their vote at all, as even other Republican officials in the state are now beginning to admit out loud.

In the following, powerful clip from Maddow's full interview last night, she asks Crist, as the former Republican Governor of Florida, about the ridiculously transparent claims by the GOP that restrictions on voter registration, the right to vote by former felons, and the shortening of early voting is "only about voter fraud" and "voting integrity."

"Is it clear to you that is just bunk?," she asks Crist who replies directly in turn: "It's crystal clear to me. You couldn't be more right, in my humble opinion. And, you know, we can say this about all these road bloacks that are put in the way of people exercising their right to vote, and we saw it in a dramatic fashion this last Election Day in Florida"...

Rachel Maddow's full intro to the interview with Charlie Christ, describing how and why he was purged by the party (likely had something to do with his progressive position on democracy!) and the full 11/27/12 interview with the former Republican FL Governor, both follow below...

We were reminded of our delinquency again today upon reviewing his candid assessment of the downfall of modern Republicanism and its central core of pretend conservatism as published in a must-read article for the December 2012 issue of American Conservative. The confessional includes, among many on-target money quotes, this one: "Living in the Fox News cocoon, most Republicans had no clue that they were losing [in 2012] or that their ideas were both stupid and politically unpopular."

Bartlett begins by detailing his decades-long list of unquestionably rock-solid conservative credentials, all of which have earned him exactly nothing from today's clueless, brain-addled, incurably propagandized Fox "News" "conservative" crowd. In fact, he has garnered their utter contempt by attempting to tell them the truth over the past decade or so, finding himself tossed "under a bus" along with The BRAD BLOG's very few other past "Intellectually Honest Conservative" awardees and dissident, reality-based Republicans such as David Frum and Andrew Sullivan.

"To this day," Bartlett writes, "I don't think they understand that my motives were to help them avoid the permanent decline that now seems inevitable"...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Another round of UN climate talks begins in Doha, Qatar with more bad news: Permafrost is melting; PLUS: ALEC & Heartland Institute mobilize to kill clean energy ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Silly me. Stood down for a day or so over the Holiday weekend, only to get back to work on Sunday morning (actually, on Saturday morning, but gave up after two hours or so thinking it was this was all just a sign that I should keep looking the other way for a few more hours) to find that something is making my computer go haywire. Or, rather, making it move like a slug in a bowl of molasses. Completely unusable. Have spent the entire day today trying to figure out WTF is going on. That'll teach me to take a day off.

Suspected culprit at this hour: Windows Update.

Condition: Happier than a few hours ago when I thought I was looking at a dying hard drive.

Upside: At least it didn't happen while we were still in the middle of an election.

Moral: Depending on computers during elections is a very dangerous idea.

Anyway. Working on it. Please talk amongst yourselves. Back soon...

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UPDATE 11/26/12, 7:22pm PT: Yes, still slogging. Making what looks like occasional progress. Now the trick is to get out of this mess in time to do Green News Report tomorrow! Today's Good News: Seemingly very slow news day...

It's our final night this week of guest hosting for the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show. Mike will be back LIVE on Monday! (A grateful nation rejoices.)

For the last time this week, we'll again be BradCasting LIVE from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open, at the bottom of this item, a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

PLUS! Much more, including whatever it is that you and/or I might be thankful for this time of year, and as many of your calls as we can possibly get to over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at our Sante Fe affiliate KTRC 1260, or our Minnesota affiliate KTNF 950 (tell them you're from "Minnesota" when asked). Also, you should be able to listen live at WhiteRose Society if the radio gods are with us.

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POST-SHOW UPDATE: Thanks to all our listeners, callers and chatters for a great Thanksgiving week filling in for Mike and Kathy. My thanks, especially, to them! The ad-free audio archives from tonight's show are now posted below (along with the chat room archives). Enjoy 'em all over the holidays and have a great Thanksgiving....until we meet here again...

There is a little known ritual that occurs in the election years when Democrats prevail: Big "Conservative" Media starts to pull progressive talk radio off the air.

I documented this in my 2009 documentary film, Broadcast Blues: after Democratic candidates made big gains in 2006, Clear Channel and other public airwaves radio licensees pulled several well performing progressive talk radio stations off the air, and replaced them with sports and other programming. It would be easier to understand if the new programs got big ratings bumps, but that didn't happen. The new shows' ratings are typically only half those of Progressive Talkers.

True to form, Clear Channel Communications, which owns about 850 radio stations nationwide, took the Progressive voices off of the public airwaves in Portland, Oregon just days after Democrats won big nationwide. When devoted listeners tuned in to Portland's 620 AM, they expected to hear Thom Hartmann, Mike Malloy and other Progressives waxing exuberant in the wake of this year's election results and looking forward to new possibilities in the new session of Congress under a wildly popular re-elected President. Instead, they heard fans exuberant over some football game or other. FoxSports620 now broadcasts over that 25,000 watt frequency on our public airwaves.

Bye bye lefty talk, hello left-handed quarterbacks.

It isn't like Portland needs another sports radio station; there are already two in that very same market. But the community does need to hear an alternative to the "conservative" talk which is broadcast on eight, count them, eight separate frequencies on Portland's radio dials.

As usual, we'll be BradCasting LIVE tonight from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open, at the bottom of this item, a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at our Sante Fe affiliate KTRC 1260, or our Minnesota affiliate KTNF 950 (tell them you're from "Minnesota" when asked). Also, you should be able to listen live at WhiteRose Society if the radio gods are with us.

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POST-SHOW UPDATE: Fun show tonight, but you be the judge! Commercial-free audio archives are all now posted below for your listening pleasure (as are the chat room archives). See ya tomorrow night, for our final night in for Malloy this week!...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Conservative World Bank warns of catastrophic climate change; For the first time, MotorTrend's 'Car of the Year' is all-electric!; CO2 emissions reach record highs; EPA slams Alaska's proposed Pebble Mine; Green up your Thanksgiving; PLUS: Urging universities to divest from fossil-fuel companies... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

For two weeks since Election Day, we have been working to ensure every vote is counted accurately and fairly. We have made progress towards that goal, thanks to the dedication of our supporters and their unrelenting efforts to protect the integrity of the democratic process. While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election.

While there are certainly still inaccuracies in the results, and the actions of the St. Lucie County and Palm Beach County Supervisors of Elections rightly raise questions in my mind and for many voters, after much analysis and this past weekend's recount in St. Lucie County, our legal team does not believe there are enough over-counted, undercounted or fraudulent votes to change the outcome of the election.

While a contest of the election results might have changed the vote totals, we do not have evidence that the outcome would change. Given the extremely high evidentiary hurdles involved in a successful challenge, I will not ask my generous supporters to help fund a drawn-out, expensive legal effort with little chance of success. Therefore, we will not contest the certification or challenge the seating of Congressman-elect Murphy.

Serving the people in the House of Representatives has been among the highest honors of my life, but this seat does not belong to me, or for that matter, to any individual. It belongs to the people.

I want to congratulate my opponent, Patrick Murphy, as the new Congressman from the 18th Congressional District. I pray he will serve his constituents with honor and integrity, and put the interests of our nation before his own.

With West's concession, however, there are still a few points to keep in mind moving forward...

Once again, we'll be BradCasting LIVE from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open, at the bottom of this item, a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at our Sante Fe affiliate KTRC 1260, or our Minnesota affiliate KTNF 950 (tell them you're from "Minnesota" when asked). Also, you should be able to listen live at WhiteRose Society if the radio gods are with us.

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POST-SHOW UPDATE: Thanks to all for an awesome show tonight! Commercial-free audio (and chat room) archives are now posted below for your listening pleasure, and we'll be back tomorrow night for Round 2! Keep it lit until then!...